They discuss Hamid Karzai’s second term, international calls to clean up corruption and the worsening security situation.

They also look at the fallout from a landmark case in Italy involving the alleged CIA abduction and so-called rendition of a Muslim cleric. An Italian judge convicted and sentenced 23 CIA agents, in their absence, of abducting the  cleric in Italy and taking him to Egypt where he says he was tortured.

In a country where a woman is confined to her home, Joya is breaking all kinds of cultural, social and religious stereotypes. In May 2007, she was suspended after referring to the parliament as a stable, she said at least in “in a stable we have animals like a cow which is useful in that it provides milk and a donkey that carry a load.”

She speaks candidly about the challenges facing Afghanistan. She says that the low turnout in the presidential election is proof that the Afghan people are dissatisfied with the current government. She attributes the rise of Taliban to the failed policy of the U.S. in Afghanistan. She is also a staunch opponent of increasing U.S. troop levels in her country. Joya wants the U.S. and NATO to keep in mind that no foreign military has ever succeeded in controlling Afghanistan.

For her, the status of women now is no different than under the Taliban. She says that it may even be worse because the rate of suicide and abduction is high, and many rapists go untouched.

Because she is unabashedly outspoken, her life is under constant threat and she must be accompanied by bodyguards. But nothing so far seems to succeed in slowing her down. For sure not the many failed assassination attempts on her life, or the awful treatment she gets from her male colleagues in parliament.

Joya spent her childhood at a refugee camp in Iran and Pakistan, and returned to the Taliban-controlled Afghanistan in the late 1990s and worked for an underground organization helping women. She is now on a book tour in the U.S.  promoting her memoir, A Woman Among Warlords: The Extraordinary Story of an Afghan Woman Who Dared to Speak Out, co-written by Derrick O’Keefe.

- Mohammad Al Kassim

Yuli Edelstein, the Minister of Public Affairs and the Diaspora in the Israeli cabinet, joins Daljit Dhaliwal to discuss the prospects of peace in the Middle East and why Israel won’t agree to a settlement freeze.

Al Jazeera English’s John Terrett reports on the challenges and reasons behind Abbas’ decision to bow out of politics — including the expansion of Israeli settlements and the impartial U.S. stance.

How the Beatles Rocked the Kremlin is a new documentary film by Leslie Woodhead that explores the effect of the seminal rock group on the fall of the Soviet Union.

Vote now for the musician that you think has most profoundly affected world events: The Beatles, U2/Bono, Pete Seeger, Michael Jackson or Bob Dylan.

The documentary premiers Monday, November 9, at 9:00 p.m. EST on THIRTEEN.

CAMBODIA/THAILAND: Cambodia recalled its ambassador from Thailand hours after Thailand recalled its ambassador from Phnom Penh. Diplomatic relations between the two countries took a blow after Cambodia offered an advisory position to the controversial former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

INDIA: A crowded bus plunged down a steep mountain gorge in northern India, killing 32 people and injuring at least 30 others.

SOUTH AFRICA: South Africa is moving to enlist men in the fight against HIV/AIDS. Through a series of recent ads catering to men, local organizations are hoping that men will play a greater role in addressing South Africa’s most pressing medical battle.

ZIMBABWE: Morgan Tsvangirai, Zimbabwe’s Prime Minister, has once again agreed to work with President Robert Mugabe, ending the three-week boycott of the unity government.

KENYA: 750,000 Kenyans could be affected by flooding as heavy rains hit the East African nation, according to the United Nations. Six people have already been killed in floods and landlsides.

GERMANY: The European head of General Motors has quit his job “in disgust” after GM decided to abandon plans to sell its European unit, Opel.

UK: British Airways will be cutting 1,200 additional jobs, after posting a six-month loss of $361 million.

RUSSIA AND CIS: Russia’s health minister has warned the media not to spread panic over swine flu, claiming that the situation is under control and that H1N1 mortality rates do not exceed that of seasonal flu.

Neighboring Ukraine is taking extraordinary measures to combat the H1N1 outbreak there. The mayor of Kiev wants to impose a quarantine on the capital city, and authorities there are organizing the free distribution of gauze masks to prevent the virus’ spread. Meanwhile, Azerbaijan has confirmed its official first case of swine flu.

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev warned against a new wall of hostility and mutual distrust in Europe, adding that old stereotypes and mistrust had yet to be banished. He made the comments in an interview published today in the newspaper Rossisskaya Gazeta.

In the latest development in the PR war between Russia and Georgia, Georgia is launching a Russian-language television station to reach ethnic minorities across the Caucasus.

Human rights worker Arbi Khachukayev has been abducted from Moscow and flown to Chechnya. Khachukayev, who works for the human rights group Memorial, had recently fled Chechnya, fearing for his personal safety.

Russia’s leading search engine Yandex has decided to stop ranking popular blog posts–a move that critics have derided as pandering to Kremlin censorship.

BRAZIL: Israeli President Shimon Peres and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are both set to visit Brazil next week — part of Brazil’s strategy as it hopes to cement its larger global role is to mediate the conflict in the Middle East.

HONDURAS: Honduras’ ousted president, Manuel Zelaya, says a U.S.-brokered pact has failed to end the country’s political crisis.

VENEZUELA: President Hugo Chavez has ordered 15,000 troops along the country’s border with Colombia after months of political tensions.

SAUDI ARABIA: The Saudi newspaper Al-Watan is reporting that scores of Yemeni Houthis fighters have been killed in new Saudi Arabia’s air attacks in the remote mountainous regions along the the borders between Yemen and Saudi Arabia.

ISRAEL: Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon has said that Israel is not bluffing in its threats to take military action against Iran’s contentious nuclear program. In the news regarding the UN General Assembly endorsing the Goldstone report, Israel’s Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said that the vote shows Israel has the moral majority.

PALESTINE: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas announced in a televised speech yesterday that he would not seek reelection. The announcement dealt a huge blow to the Obama administration efforts to revive Middle East peace negotiations. In another story, the United Nations General Assembly voted to endorse the Goldstone report which accused Israel of war crimes during its military offensive on the Gaza Strip last winter.

IRAN: Press TV reporting that the US has called on Iran to accept an IAEA-backed proposal for nuclear cooperation as proposed, reiterating that the draft deal would remain unchanged.

In Denmark, a Ford Focus costs $51,000 — $34,000 of which are taxes. The Danish economy has grown 78 percent, while cutting carbon emissions in half. The country has also become a net exporter of energy — wind alone has created 30,000 new jobs.

Martin Savidge hosts Filipino peace negotiator and Catholic priest Eliseo Mercado and security analyst Zachary Abuza when Worldfocus Radio explores the forgotten terrorist front in the Philippines.

For more on Worldfocus’ coverage of the Philippines, including original videos, click here.

Since 9/11, the U.S. has stationed 500 to 600 troops in the Philippines to strengthen military forces there. The U.S. counter-insurgency effort in the Philippines has been applauded as a success story for its mix of military action and soft power — including one of the largest USAID packages in the world.

But how lasting is this counter-insurgency success? Does it solve the root problems of poverty and lack of schools and infrastructure? And, if the U.S. pulls out, is the Philippines prepared to stop the tide of terrorism?

The U.S. strategy has been to root out terrorists from the lawless jungles of the south, which is home to the country’s Muslim minority and vulnerable to external terrorist groups like al-Qaeda.

The show:

• explains the current insurgency in the poor, predominantly Muslim south of the Philippines
• evaluates how Filipino counter-insurgency tactics measure up to other Southeast Asian counter-insurgency efforts
• examines the mix of U.S. military might, diplomacy and humanitarian aid to combat local and regional instability
• discusses the importance of peace and reconciliation between the numerous Filipino ethnic groups

Martin Savidge hosts the following guests:

Zachary Abuza is a professor at Simmons College, Boston, specializing in Southeast Asian politics and security issues. He visits the region four to five times a year. Zachary is the author of Conspiracy of Silence: The Insurgency in Southern Thailand and its Implications for Southeast Asian Security, Muslims, Politics and Violence in Indonesia and Militant Islam in Southeast Asia, among other publications. He contributes frequently to the Jane’s Intelligence Review, the Counterterrorism Blog and the Jamestown Foundation’s Terrorism Monitor.

Father Eliseo “Jun” Mercado, Jr. is a Catholic priest and peace advocate who has been extensively involved in the peace process in Mindanao, the southern part of the Philippines. He is an expert on the role of Islam in the Philippines and led the independent cease-fire between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front separatist group. Father Mercado has also been extensively involved in peace process in Mindanao. In October 2007, he was selected to be one of the 20 delegates representing all NGO and CSO accredited at the UN to the High Level UN Session on inter-religious dialogue.

Credits:
Host: Martin Savidge
Producers: Lisa Biagiotti and Ben Piven

Daljit Dhaliwal speaks with Gideon Lichfield, deputy editor of The Economist online in New York, about British public sentiment and the reaction of Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

We were some of the first people on earth to see the sun set on Saturday night.  After about 36 hours of travel from the Maldives, we landed on a dot of earth that is the Kingdom of Tonga, greeted by a brilliant Pacific sunset.

Tonga is in the second-most-eastern time zone – the second to start, and end, each calendar day.  But Tongans don’t seem too aware of its significance, and have a relaxed attitude towards the concept of time in general.   “Time doesn’t play a major role here,” said one of our guides.

“Island time” is a bit of a cliché, but it’s true that the Tongan pace is mellow.  I didn’t see a single stop light in this country – just a few roundabouts at the “busier” intersections, and a crossing gate in Lifuka, where the main road intersects the airport runway.  The prevailing speed limit is about 25 miles an hour and sometimes there are more pigs roaming free in the street than there are cars.

Ha’apai, Tonga. Photo: Megan Thompson

Political change has been slow to arrive here, too.  Tonga is one of the few absolute monarchies left in the world — though not for much longer.  The recently-crowned King George Tupou V has promised to start handing power over to the people next year, transitioning the government from one dominated by nobles and political appointees to one run by the prime minister.

But adopting a more modern form of government surely won’t mean that Tonga will lose the many rich traditions that thrive here.  Most Tongans still wear the traditional waist mats – the ta’ovala for men, and the kiekie for women.  It’s a sign of respect – like a neck tie, as it was explained to us – and is required in most schools, government buildings and church.  The Tongan currency is called the pa’anga, but large, hand-made tapestries called tapa are sometimes still used as a form of currency and wealth.

Tapa, made from pounded tree bark, is used sometimes as a form of wealth and currency. Photo: Megan Thompson

That’s not to say that Tongans need - or have - much money.  This continues to be, by and large, a culture of subsistence living, highly dependent on the abundant nature here.  Food is gathered daily from the sea and lush land, and the strong family unit supplies other basic needs.  The material items and frivolities that most Westerners spend their disposable income on just don’t exist.  On the island of Lifuka, I asked our guide what he did in his spare time.

“I go and cut crops on my land,” he replied.

But how about for fun?

“I take a walk.”

Tongans are intimately connected to nature, and most we spoke to have noticed that the weather seems less predictable and the sea level seems to be rising.  But many weren’t familiar with the concept of climate change.

That will probably change soon as well.  For just like the sunrise and sunset, climate change will arrive first in Tonga and other small island states.  And unlike the leisurely rhythms by which most business is done here, this issue must be tackled with urgency and haste.

The government recently formed the new Ministry for Environment and Climate Change and has started a campaign to spread awareness.  They are also gearing up to attend the climate change talks in Copenhagen in December.  There, they will join other small island nations to demand that the international community pick up the pace to save this Pacific island paradise and its people before it’s too late.

Read more about his experience overseas in his blog, Embedded in Afghanistan.

The wait continues for the president’s decision on General McChrystal’s recommendation. The unfortunate aspect of all of this business is that the debate is taking place in the public eye. While having a public debate on the efficacy of sending more troops certainly satisfies the exigencies of American politics, it’s most certainly not beneficial to the war effort as a whole. I say this because if the decision is made to not send more troops, or even not send as many as asked for the by the general, we will be perceived by the Afghan government, people, and security forces as abandoning them and losing our will to fight the insurgents. I can confirm that the ANA leaders I habitually talked with were always worried about our ability to stick things out and did not want to see us go anywhere until the country had progressed significantly.

Perception is an incredibly important part of any counter-insurgency, as winning the support of the people should ultimately lead to victory. I can confirm that many of the people of Afghanistan don’t really care who wins this war, just so long as someone wins it, and they can live a semblance of a normal life…i.e. the people will support the side that appears to be on the path to victory.

For these reasons, any action leading to the perception of weakness or lack of commitment on our part needs to be scrupulously avoided. It would have been better to avoid all of this public debate on the issue…unless the request is granted of course, in which case we may take some small benefit from all of this publicizing of our intentions on the matter.

The views expressed by contributing bloggers do not reflect the views of Worldfocus or its partners.

But we don’t hear much about the toll on average Pakistanis and how they cope with the menace of militant attacks every day.

Daljit Dhaliwal talks about everyday life in Lahore with Saeed Shafqat, adjunct professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.

MYANMAR: The United States wants to see real progress in Myanmar towards democracy before any policy changes, said a senior U.S. diplomat after the first high-level talks between the two nations in more than a decade were completed.

JAPAN: Toyota Motor Corporation announced a surprise profit last quarter, suggesting a gradual recovery may be under way for Japan’s automakers.

CHINA: China’s ministry of health is going to ban the use of beating to treat teenagers addicted to the web. There are dozens of treatment centers in the country that offers to help teenagers withdraw from their web addiction by using military-style boot camp methods with tough extreme physical exercise and counseling.

NIGERIA: Late Wednesday Nigeria recorded its first swine flu case. The virus was found in a 9-year old girl from the United States living in Lagos.

MAURITANIA: Despite a law enacted in 2007 criminalizing slavery, the practice still persists in the northwest African country of Mauritania. That’s according to an independent UN representative who recently toured the country.

GERMANY: Thousands of Opel workers went on strike to protest GM’s move to stop the sale of Opel, a move which GM has said will cost thousands of German jobs.

SWEDEN: The Scandinavian country approved a gas pipeline which would bring natural gas from Russia to Germany. The move has already been approved by Denmark, and needs the go-ahead from Finland, Russia, and Germany to move forward.

UK: The Bank of England said Thursday it would inject an additional 25 billion pounds into its economy.

CZECH REPUBLIC: Forty-five percent of Czech citizens believe that social conditions are better today than before 1989, according to a poll published prior to the 20th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution. Seventy-four percent pointed to the desire for freedom as the main factor behind the revolution.

RUSSIA AND CIS:

Russian investigators have arrested two people they say are responsible for last summer’s killings of human rights activist Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Baburina.

Swine flu deaths are on the rise in Russia, where fifteen people have died thus far from the epidemic. Buryatia–the latest region to declare a swine flu emergency–has banned all mass gatherings and is requiring every individual to wear a mask in public.

A Wassily Kandinsky painting has sold at Sotheby’s for $9.4 million. Sales of Russian art at Sotheby’s this week have netted more than $13 billion.

Police have seized more than 48 buckets of salmon caviar and 9 boxes of crab meat from poachers on the far eastern Kamchatka Peninsula. Illegal poaching is a main source of livelihood for many residents of the area.

Time reports on global warming skeptics in Russia and the challenges the rest of the world faces in getting Russia to sign on to reductions in emissions targets in advance of next month’s Copenhagen conference.

Bloggers and free speech activists are criticizing Russia’s largest search engine Yandex for pandering to Kremlin censorship, the Times of London reports.

MEXICO: An American airman was killed in a Ciudad Juarez bar along with five other people last night, bringing the total number of homicides to 30 over the last four days.

Authorities in Mexico have arrested three doctors and a nurse at a private hospital for telling mothers that their newborns had died and then selling the babies.

CUBA: Russia and Cuba have signed four accords that will allow a Russian state energy firm to run oil exploration projects on the Island for the next 25 years.

ISRAEL: Haaretz newspaper reports that a ship seized on Wednesday by Israeli security forces has been released. Israeli officials said it contained tons of weapons supplied by Iran to Hezbollah.

LEBANON: In its official channel Al Manar TV, Lebanese militant group Hezbollah denied Israeli allegations that the ship Israel intercepted on Wednesday was headed for Lebanon. Hezbollah says that Israel is creating a distraction from the Goldstone report on war crimes in Gaza.

IRAN: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohamed ElBaradei’s said that a resolution to the dispute over Iran’s ongoing nuclear program could be the key to a stable Middle East.

PALESTINE: In an emotional speech, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas confirmed he will not seek reelection.

SAUDI ARABIA: Al Jazeera English is reporting that Saudi fighter jets have pounded the strongholds of Houthi combatants in northern Yemen after an earlier confrontation between Shia fighters and Saudi security forces killed two Saudi security men.

PAKISTAN: The Pakistani military said it has killed some 28 militants in South Waziristan.

AFGHANISTAN:The United Nations announced today said that it is temporarily relocating more than half its international staff in Afghanistan following last week’s deadly Taliban attack against UN workers. Also from Kandahar, Afghanistan, an overnight airstrike by international forces killed nine civilians, including at least three children.

A British Field Hospital in Helmand province. Photo: Flickr user foreignoffice

After news yesterday of the deaths of five British soldiers in Afghanistan, public opinion in the U.K. seems to be shifting. Amid growing calls for a policy change, Prime Minister Gordon Brown is to deliver a major speech tomorrow.

Does growing British opposition to the war affect your perspective on America’s role in Afghanistan?

Tell us what you think in the comments section below. Please remember to be respectful and on-point in your comments. Malicious or offensive comments will be deleted and repeat offenders will be banned.

According to local lore, the tradition began as a way to prevent hyenas from attacking local children by keeping them outside of the city. Today, it’s a way to make a living from Ethiopia’s small tourist trade.

On the sidelines, anti-government protesters have clashed with security forces, resulting in widespread chaos throughout the Iranian capital city.

Geneive Abdo, who runs the insideIRAN project for The Century Foundation, discusses the day’s events in Tehran with Daljit Dhaliwal.

Al Jazeera English reports on the protests from Tehran.

Tokyo’s neighborhoods straddle between the need for modern development and the desire to maintain historical buildings and structures.

For instance, Fujiizaka, affectionately named “the slope for seeing Mount Fuji,” in the Nippori neighborhood, has been increasingly blocked by tall buildings that obstruct its view. Residents have banded together to push for preservation. The neighborhood cause is slowly gaining support as a growing desire to preserve historical places takes hold in Tokyo, reported the New York Times.

The city of Tokyo is geographically complex, with 8.5 million people living in 23 districts that span 620 kilometers.  The history of the city’s development is characterized by a continual process of restructuring and growth. It is a city that is renewed on average every twenty years, with few buildings surviving from the past.

This is due in part because as the capital of Japan since 1868, it has been used as a showcase for the Japanese modern age. It has also seen major development because of the need for new construction after World War II, earthquakes and the Olympics, according to the Goethe-Institut.

Chris Salzberg, a writer/translator living in Tokyo, Japan discusses the reaction to the recent development plan for the neighborhood of Shimokitazawa for Global Voices Online.

Tokyo has no lack of small, winding streets. Shibuya has its maze of criss-crossing shōtengai, Roppongi its club-lined back alleyways, Ueno its open-air street markets. But no neighborhood in Tokyo packs more complexity per square foot than Shimokitazawa, a neighborhood whose layout bears closer resemblance to a ball of thread than to anything an urban planner would come up with.

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Shimokitazawa’s spaghetti-like mess of streets and train lines evoke passion among some, frustration among others. The area has earned a name for itself as a breeding ground for creative young artists with its dozens of small theaters, art galleries and music venues. While eccentric characters like Rikimaru Toho fit perfectly into this urban environment, others see the maze of narrow streets as a dangerous fire hazard and a giant urban congestion knot in need of unwinding.

The entire area happens to lie in the path of a would-be thoroughfare running through Shimokitazawa to Shibuya, originally set forth in a “War damage revival plan” drafted all the way back in 1946. After several changes, that plan was brought back to life in 2003 and demolition and construction work has been slated to start in 2010. Should it be executed, the plan will split Shimokitazawa apart with a 26-meter wide expressway, Subsidiary Route 54 (補助54号線).

While the basic shape of those redevelopment plans had been known for some time, it was only a few weeks ago that the first glimpses of the new design finally emerged on the blog of Kuniyoshi Yoshida, a local landowner and head of the Shimokitazawa South [ja] shopowners’ union. Comments which began to appear on the blog, blasting the new design for its failure to respect the Shimokitazawa atmosphere, were swiftly deleted, but hostility against the plans only grew.

See this video of the streets of Shimokitazawa neighborhood below:

Under that program, terror suspects were secretly detained and flown to foreign countries for interrogations that some have described as torture.

Gabor Rona, international legal director of Human Rights First, speaks to Daljit Dhaliwal about the rendition issue.

Should American intelligence officials be punished for actions that lead to torture?

Tell us what you think in the comments section below. Please remember to be respectful and on-point in your comments. Malicious or offensive comments will be deleted and repeat offenders will be banned.